Meela's Story
by KatieScarlet
Summary: What happened to Meela during the events of the first movie? How did those events lead to the events of TMR?
1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter One: Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

The unforgiving equatorial sun blazed in the cloudless sky, making the graduate students working at the dig sweat, squint and complain. Aside from the furnace-like climate, they had little to complain about. They had been selected as the top students in the world and given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to excavate a recently-uncovered tomb near Saqqara.

One of the students, a young woman with long, squarely-cut black hair, sat off by herself, using a small paintbrush to clean dust and sand from a statuette of Anubis. Around her, her colleagues toiled in the heat, shoveling away debris from the pit surrounding the tomb's entrance. Through the millennia the desert had swallowed the complex beneath its relentless dunes, and reclaiming the site was no small task. The eager archaeologists worked through the peak of the afternoon, impatient to get inside the tomb itself. They were the most promising up-and-coming Egyptologists in the class of 1926, drawn from universities in England, America, France, India, Germany, Spain, and, of course, Egypt itself.

Meela Pasha had been to all of those places at one time or another, traveling with her businessman father. Fortunately she hadn't been with her parents when their plane crashed into the Sargasso Sea two years ago. There had been murmurs about the curse of the Bermuda Triangle, and she was inclined to believe them. She'd always been superstitious.

Despite her travels, though, she considered herself one hundred percent Egyptian. The heiress was fascinated by the area's rich history, especially the era known as the Old Kingdom. While she struggled with physics and mathematics, Egyptology came like second nature. The ancient language recorded in hieroglyphics, which few attempted to pronounce, flowed from her tongue with an uncanny grace. She couldn't explain it. She simply knew her calling was Egyptology.

Even the scorching heat didn't bother her as it did the others. She worked without complaint, studying the foot-tall statue with narrowed eyes, painstakingly brushing sand away to uncover the inscription. She pursed her full lips in concentration, ignoring the others. The statue was inscribed with a hymn to Anubis, asking that the jackal god safely lead the tomb's occupant to the Afterworld. It had probably been taken by tomb raiders in ancient times but abandoned when the thieves took flight. No doubt they had fled into the night at the sound of an approaching guard, trying to make it to their boat and back across to the eastern bank of the Nile before they were discovered and punished.

Meela closed her eyes for a moment, watching the scene play out in her mind. It all seemed so real. Some accused her of having an overactive imagination, but it was all so vivid for her, as if she had lived in those times herself. And maybe she had. She kept an open mind about a lot of things, and reincarnation was one of them.

She had to force herself to stop obsessing over details and move on with her work. There would be time to study the artifacts later, back in a nice, cool laboratory at the university. She sighed and wrapped the statue in linen, labeled it, and packed it carefully in a crate with the other things they'd unearthed that day. It never felt the same, looking at artifacts away from their context. Here, under the heat of the sun-god Ra, with the tang of baked sand in her nostrils, she felt connected with the ancient people in a way she never was inside a stuffy lab.

"Meela!" called an excited male voice from down in the pit. "Come here, quickly!"

Other students dropped their tools and rushed to see what the Curator had discovered. If he called for their star translator, it must be something important.

Meela dusted off her hands on her khakis and hopped down into the dig, surefooted in leather boots despite the crumbling sand. "What is it?"

The Curator was an odd little man, fluent in a number of languages, both dead and living. His name was Faud Hafez, but everyone simply called him "the Curator." He was either Egyptian himself or something very close to it, for he fit in perfectly here in the desert. There was something unsettling about him, but no one could ever put their finger on it. Most simply dismissed him as a little creepy and let it go at that. He was a skilled archaeologist and beneath his flowing red head covering there lay a seemingly unending stash of historical facts and figures. Meela was the only student he really got along with.

Now he pointed at the inscription on the tomb's door, turning to his best pupil with a grin. "What does this say?" he asked with the air of one who knew already but wanted confirmation.

Without a moment's hesitation, Meela began reading in flawless ancient Egyptian. The other students gave her blank or annoyed stares until she translated into English. "A vile curse be upon he who defiles this tomb, the eternal resting place of Horemptah, chief steward to glorious Pharaoh Djoser."

The Curator nodded. "Very good. Very good indeed. A tomb dating back to the days of the very first pyramid!"

"Well, aren't we going to open it?" asked Jeffrey, a student from a university in the southern United States. His knuckles turned white as he eagerly grasped his pickaxe.

"You don't believe in ancient curses?" Meela asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Naw," he scoffed, spitting in the sand to emphasize his point. "Fairytales and hokum. Lemme in there!"

The Curator silenced him with an icy glare. "We do not barge into tombs with pickaxes. Opening this chamber will require days of careful excavation. We will clean up for today and begin tomorrow at first light, before the sun grows too hot."

Disappointed grumbles and relieved sighs arose from the students, depending on how tired they were. Meela was indifferent. She had a great deal of patience when the situation warranted it. She packed up her brushes and picks in their leather case, humming a little tune to herself as she did so.

"Hey, Meela," Jeffrey drawled, sidling up to her in a painfully obvious attempt to flirt. "You got plans for later? Me and a couple of the guys are havin' ourselves a little shindig, and I was wonderin'..."

"Sorry," she said insincerely. "I have other plans."

Jeffrey's awkward smile gave way to a frustrated scowl. "Aww, c'mon, Meela, you never do anything."

"I study. Perhaps you should try it sometime. Then you wouldn't embarrass yourself trying to stick your pickaxe where it isn't needed." She slung her bag of supplies over her shoulder and headed for the bus, leaving him flushed and indignant.

She supposed she should socialize once in a while. It wasn't that she didn't find men attractive; she just never found one who felt right. There was a nebulous but insistent image far in the recesses of her mind, some ghostly shadow of Mr. Right, and although she had no idea who he was she knew none of her fellow students fit the bill. There was nothing wrong with having a little youthful fun, of course, but she never cared to waste time on Mr. Wrongs. It was almost as if she already knew for certain who he was...without knowing his name or face. But when she met him, she'd know. That much she was certain of.

Meela put a hand to the side of her head. Whenever she tried to put the fuzzy mental picture of him into focus, she got dizzy. Odd. She blamed it on an inner ear disorder, or bad shellfish, or something like that, but in the back of her mind she had the nagging suspicion that it was something far more important. There was something, some knowledge, some memory, some realization, just beyond her reach, scooting away like quicksilver when she tried to grab onto it. Maybe she was crazy.

She laid a shaky hand on the side of the bus, its metal burning hot in the desert sun. The dizziness wasn't going away this time.

"Akum Ra...Akum Dei..."

Where was that voice coming from? She knew she'd never heard it before, and yet...it was so very familiar, and comforting...

"Yah su hai... Yah su hai..."

Everything started going black, and she felt herself drifting in two directions at once. Her body was toppling backward into the sand, but her mind, her soul, was zooming outward. Suddenly, a vortex of memories swept across her brain.

"Yahk tu hai... Yahk tu hai... Yahk tu hai..."

It was as if someone had turned on a faucet to full force, when all her life it had merely been dripping. She remembered everything at once, overwhelmed and thrilled with the complexity and intensity of the emotion. As she floated through the dark ether, it all became clear. She had never really forgotten...she just hadn't been able or willing to remember.

Her name was not Meela Pasha. Not really. She had been born Anck-su-Namun in the great city of Thebes, over three thousand years ago. She had been sold to the royal harem after her father's financial empire collapsed. Ancient wounds throbbed anew as she recalled how Pharaoh Seti I, a pompous fool old enough to be her father, had forced himself on her, beat her, robbed her of her very humanity... Flames of passion coursed through her formless self as she remembered her true love, High Priest Imhotep. Their love had carried a horrible price, a web of secrecy and forbidden rendezvous that had culminated in their murder of Pharaoh. As the royal Med-Jai guards burst on the scene, she had plunged a dagger into her own body. She remembered everything, but most of all she remembered Imhotep...his touch, his scent, his voice--

His voice. Now. Reading from the Book of the Dead.

She had no form, yet she felt herself being drawn upward toward the sound of his voice.

No longer thinking of herself as graduate student Meela Pasha, she erupted from the black pool in an amorphous black sheet, liquid, unreal, soaring toward her body. Not the body she had left at Saqqara. Her original body. A pitiful, withered corpse lying on an altar.

There was a rushing in her ears as she regained her body, diving into the oddly familiar shell like a child hiding under the covers during a thunderstorm. She gasped and quivered, reeling with shock yet delighting in the sense of homecoming. She looked around wildly, trying to get her bearings. She lay on a cold, stone altar beside another woman who was in her prime, young and beautiful but obviously terrified out of her wits.

Anck-su-Namun--for that was who she now knew herself to be--looked up at the sound of a delightfully familiar voice. Cloaked in a black robe and kilt, the golden scarab pectoral shining against his sculpted chest, his brown eyes and cleanly-shaven head gleaming in the torchlight, gazing down at her with unconditional adoration--Imhotep. How? Why?

Shaking off the questions, she attempted to move. Oh, to run into his arms and feel the comforting warmth of his body banish the ice from her soul! But she couldn't even sit up. Her limbs were dry and stiff, her strength flickering, her head spinning.

"With your death, Anck-su-Namun shall live," Imhotep told the other woman, raising a shining ceremonial dagger, "and I shall be invincible!"

It started to make sense, then. This other woman--who also seemed bizarrely familiar--had to be sacrificed to renew her body. But wait, she wanted to say, she already had a perfectly good body, lying uninhabited back at Saqqara! But she couldn't speak, either. Only an inarticulate, rasping groan emerged from her dry throat.

"Evy! I found it!" someone yelled, and Imhotep stopped mere seconds from plunging the knife into the other's chest.

"The Book of Amun-Ra," he breathed. He pursued the intruder, setting the ceremonial knife next to her head as he passed.

Anck-su-Namun was vaguely aware of fighting around her, shouting and the clang of weapons. She turned to study the woman beside her. Suddenly, she recognized her. Her hair was curly and a lighter shade, but there was no mistaking her former pupil and step-daughter-to-be. She tried to say, "Nefertiri," but only a ghastly moan came out.

Her strength was slowly returning, though, even if her voice was not. If her beloved wanted Nefertiri--or whatever her name was in this life--dead, she would gladly help. She hated the haughty princess, hated being forced to train her, hated her blind devotion to her lecherous father, hated how she could keep a Med-Jai lover without fear of death upon discovery, hated everything about her.

Stiffly, Anck-su-Namun sat up on the edge of the altar and took the ceremonial blade in her hands. Imhotep was busy dealing with two men who apparently wanted to stop him from performing the sacrifice. If she could just get herself to function, her love wouldn't be so badly outnumbered. One of the interlopers read the cover inscription from the golden Book of Amun-Ra, and a cadre of mummified soldiers arose to join the fray. Imhotep commanded them to attack the others. That helped, but she still needed to get moving, herself...

Finally, she stood. Her limbs were shaky but she was able to walk. The fine gold knife in her hand lent her confidence. Emboldened, she lunged at Nefertiri. The reincarnated princess had retained much of her agility, unfortunately, and evaded the attack. The chase was on.

The first man was still trying to translate the rest of the golden book. The soldier mummies kept the second man busy. As Anck-su-Namun pursued Nefertiri with the flashing blade, the princess was attempting to carry on a conversation with the man with the book while trying not to get killed. The two seemed to be translating something on the fly, but she realized too late what it was. The one with the book finished the inscription, and the soldier mummies stopped attacking. She lashed out again at Nefertiri.

"Destroy him!" Imhotep was shouting. "I command you to destroy him!" Judging by the silence, there was no response on the part of the soldiers.

"Destroy Anck-su-Namun!" she heard the other man call out in ancient Egyptian.

Imhotep called out her name in warning. She whirled around, momentarily forgetting the princess, and saw the soldiers marching toward her with grim determination. What the--? No!

Her small knife was utterly inadequate for defense against the heavily-armed soldiers. There was an explosion of pain, and once again she felt herself leaving her body.

"Anck-su-Namun!" Imhotep wailed from somewhere in the distance.

Blackness.

"Meela!"

With a deep sigh she opened her eyes and found herself back in her other, living body, lying in the sand in the shade of the bus. The Curator was waving air in her face, and one of the other students was fumbling through a first-aid kit. "Meela, are you all right?" he asked.

"What...happened?" she asked, sitting up suddenly.

He steadied her by the shoulders and handed her a canteen of cool water. "You fainted."

She frowned. She hadn't fainted. Her soul had been summoned away. Right? It was far too real to have been a hallucination. "I...I was somewhere else..." she mumbled. "I was someone else, too. No, I was myself, but I'm not really me, I'm somebody else, from before... I remember, now..."

The others exchanged confused and worried looks. "We're taking you to the hospital." The Curator scooped her up and carried her onto the bus. Consciousness dimmed again, but this time it was a perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill fainting spell.

The next thing Meela knew, she was in a hospital bed. Her eyes snapped open to find the Curator sitting nearby. The lights were low and the ceiling fan helped to cool her. 

"Where am I?" She sat up too quickly, and her head went spinning again.

"Back in town, at the hospital," he told her. "You must rest."

"But...I remember."

"Remember what?"

"Everything...I think." She creased her brow. Or did she? What had been so clear when she was...wherever that was, in her old body...was all blurry now. She felt as if she needed mental glasses to clear the picture. "I... This is going to sound incredible, but you have to believe me. I'm the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian woman named Anck-su-Namun."

The Curator blinked. "Perhaps you should lie down again, Meela..."

"No, no," she said irritably. "Listen to me! How else could I know everything I know?"

"You're a brilliant student, Meela. You just had too much sun today, and--"

"No! I know things! Not because I study, but because I just...know them! From before. I was named Anck-su-Namun. I was born and lived in Thebes during the reign of Pharaoh Seti the First. I was one of his concubines."

"Now, Meela, we've all daydreamed from time to time--"

"Just listen!" she snapped.

She had never been so disrespectful toward her mentor before, and her drastic change in demeanor finally made him sit back and take note.

"I was one of Seti's concubines. He was a horrible man. He beat me...raped me...crushed my soul..." Her black eyes grew distant. "But the High Priest of Osiris, Imhotep..." Her troubled expression gave way to a dreamy smile. "He saved my life. He loved me. I loved him. Then Pharaoh caught us together, and...we killed him. And I took my own life with the same dagger. Imhotep escaped and tried to bring me back to life with the Book of the Dead, but something went wrong..."

The Curator shook his head sadly, appearing to mourn the sanity of his star pupil.

"You don't believe me," she said miserably.

He was silent.

"I wouldn't have believed me, either, but today...he summoned my spirit back to my old body."

"Who?"

"Imhotep."

"Summoned your spirit."

"Yes."

"To your old body."

"Yes. It was all shriveled and mummified, but it was mine. It felt right."

"How? He would have been dead for over three thousand years."

"But he's not. I just saw him."

"Where?"

"I don't know," she said, near tears with frustration. "He was somewhere, some dark chamber, and he was reading from the Book of the Dead..."

"The Book of the Dead?"

"Stop repeating everything I say! Yes, the Book of the Dead!"

"That's just a myth."

"No! I saw it."

"What you saw was a hallucination brought on by too much sun and not enough water. You need some rest, and--"

"You don't believe me."

"Meela--"

"You don't believe me. You don't. But it's true. I swear it! I know what I saw! What I heard! What I felt!" Tears welled up, and she shut her eyes to prevent any from falling. "It was real." If only she could retrieve her memories as clearly as she had before! It was all so fuzzy now!

"Get some rest, Meela. You'll feel better tomorrow," he said, gently closing the door behind him.

She buried her face in the pillow and wept.


	2. Where's a Good Librarian When You Need O...

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter Two: Where's a Good Librarian When You Need One?

It had been a full week since the incident. Meela's fellow students treated her like a lunatic and the Curator did his best to ignore her when she brought up "that nonsense." Still, she refused to let the matter drop.

She was ordered to stay away from the dig for health reasons--she wasn't sure if they were referring to mental or physical ones. No matter. Her time was better spent in the university library, devouring everything she could about the reign of Seti the First. She was surprised to find no mention of his murder until he realized that the Med-Jai would have carefully hidden that information. A divine ruler simply did not get killed by a concubine and a High Priest. It was unthinkable. Instead, she found no mention of his death at all. Neither could she find any mention of Anck-su-Namun or Imhotep. There were references to an Imhotep, but this one was an architect (among other things) during a much earlier dynasty. She found nothing about herself or her Imhotep. Apparently their names had been struck from the history books as well, cursed to eternal obscurity for their deeds. Such a thing was horrible for the ancient Egyptian mind, and wasn't exactly desirable even to a modern one. To be utterly forgotten, with no trace of you lasting through the ages...

Meela swore and slammed the thick, musty tome shut, startling some others studying nearby.

If her past life had been excised from history, there would be no record of her burial place. And wherever that was, Imhotep had been very recently. She didn't understand, unless he had been reincarnated, too... But no, it didn't feel that way to her, and one thing recent events had taught her was to trust her gut instincts.

She put her head down on the table and sighed into her arms. There had to be some clue or angle she was missing, but what? Curses, she griped silently.

Wait a minute...curses! That was it!

She flew out of her chair to the card catalog and began frantically searching. "Egypt, Ancient... Art... Burial customs... Cats, and... Chariots... Curses!" 

Minutes later, she was sitting on the floor in front of a bookshelf, poring over a dusty book on ancient Egyptian curses.

"What's the worst thing you could do? Kill Pharaoh. So what's the worst curse they could give you?" she mumbled to herself, aimlessly flipping pages.

She stopped, and the blood in her veins turned to ice. The Hom-Dai. Of course.

The Curator was wrong. Imhotep hadn't been dead for over three thousand years. He'd been undead.

The full implications of it all hit her like a physical blow, and she flopped back on the hard floor with a stifled moan. Her soul mate had been essentially mummified alive, his tongue cut out, buried in a sarcophagus filled with flesh-eating scarab beetles, deprived of all protective spells and charms, then was doomed to roam as the undead forever, forced to steal life from others to regenerate and unleash plagues upon the earth. All these horrors, because they had loved each other.

Well, okay, they had sort of murdered the Pharaoh, too, but from everything she remembered about Seti the perverted old toad deserved it.

But Imhotep...how he must have suffered!

Meela's heart swelled with love, despair and sympathy. She clutched the volume of curses to her chest and held her breath to keep from weeping. Somehow she would make this right. She would find a way to rescue her beloved from his eternal torment and ensure that such misfortune never befell them again.

It was far, far easier said than done, but she vowed to herself that no matter what it took she and Imhotep would be safely together once more.

Meela stood before the Curator's desk, dressed in her nicest blouse, trying her absolute best not to seem insane. Judging by the expression on his face, it wasn't working.

"Give me one week," she said again. "Just one week to poke around Thebes, to find something to prove this to you. I swear if I can't find proof in one week I'll never mention it to you again."

"Meela, please. I understand you've been unwell, but you really must abandon this fantasy and resume your studies. You're far too bright a student to--"

"No!" she interrupted. "It's not a fantasy! If you'd just give me a chance--"

"Listen to me. These sorts of things simply don't happen. You're an intelligent young woman, Meela. Think about it. Do you really believe you're the reincarnated form of a three-thousand year old concubine? Do you really think some cursed Egyptian priest is still walking around after all this time?"

"Yes," she said stubbornly. "Do you honestly believe that everything in the world can be explained with logic?" She captured his gaze with unwavering black eyes, her lips tight with determination.

He hesitated, sighed and stood up. "All right. Tomorrow is Friday. After class you and I will get on a ship and go down to Thebes. You'll have the weekend to look around. If you can't show me concrete proof of your fantastic story, you'll promise never to bring this nonsense up again and return to your studies."

"And if I can prove it?" she asked, raising her chin in defiance.

The Curator gave a snake-like smile. "I'd like to meet this three-thousand-year-old priest of yours."

She finally grinned. "Me too..."


	3. Homeward Bound

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter Three: Homeward Bound

Meela stood at the prow of the small ship carrying her upstream, southward to Thebes. Her pulse quickened with each passing mile, urging the craft to go faster. She had asked for a week. She had two days. She had to make them count.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the hiss of the water around the prow, trying to remember. It was exceedingly frustrating, after those moments of utter clarity, to have her memories so hazy. She knew she had been an Ancient Egyptian woman named Anck-su-Namun who had loved Imhotep and killed Seti, but beyond the surface details the picture got fuzzy. Who were her parents? Did she have siblings? How did she end up as a concubine of Pharaoh? How long had she fulfilled that role before the fateful confrontation that left her with no apparent options except suicide?

There were more questions than answers, but she knew three things clearly. One, some part of her still loved Imhotep. Two, if she could only find him, she instinctively knew he could revive and clarify her memories. Three, her best hope of finding him lay in convincing the Curator she wasn't entirely crazy.

Meela hung her head. And to think just a short time ago her only worry had been choosing classes for next semester and avoiding a social life. Her mouth twisted into an ironic smile, and she forced herself to unclench her sweaty fists. Destiny was playing no small part in this whole mess, and it would probably steer her in the right direction. If, that was, destiny had pity on reincarnated concubines and cursed priests.

She sighed, shook out her hands to relieve the tension, and headed back to her cabin in search of a drink.

Thebes was nothing like she remembered it, of course. "Meela" had never been there before, but Anck-su-Namun had been quite familiar with it. Modern construction had overrun the ancient buildings. The few surviving ruins weren't even satisfactorily restored. She wandered through the streets with her eyes half-closed, trying to sort out the disarray of hazy memories and modern contamination. The Curator trailed behind her with a skeptical frown, lugging both their suitcases.

"The palace was over there," she muttered, peering into the distance.

"No one has yet uncovered the palace of Seti the First," the Curator informed her.

"The palace was over there," she repeated firmly. "And the marketplace should be right about..." They turned a corner and she pointed triumphantly. "Here!"

"Anyone with a nose and ears could tell that," he said wryly, taking in the jumbled mess of kiosks, produce, handicrafts, haggling adults, crying children and dirty animals. He jumped aside and yanked his suitcase away from a hungry camel with an appetite for leather.

"Yes, it's here now, but it was here then, too!" she said crossly. "It looked a lot like this, actually..." With a distant look, she wandered off again, and he was forced to follow. "I remember a building, nearby..." She squinted. It felt as if someone were watching her. The hairs on the nape of her neck rose, and she turned toward the sensation.

A rushing in her ears overwhelmed her, and in the time it took her to blink she was back in ancient times. She blinked again, several times, and shook her head, but the vision was still there. The bazaar was devoid of any modern touches; no electric wiring hung from the eaves. Music from a tinny radio was gone, replaced by a reed flute somewhere behind her. There were no camels, since they had been introduced to Egypt much later in history. Everything seemed more real. Colors were brighter, smells stronger--not necessarily a good thing, considering the livestock in evidence--and sounds were clearer.

She looked down at herself and found she was now wearing a gold-fringed loincloth composed of about as much cloth as a standard doily, though with thankfully less holes. The rest of her body was covered in intricate swirls of paint and gold bangles. Strings of gold beads clicked in her hair as she lifted her head again, mortified by her scandalous lack of clothes. Yet the Curator was nowhere to be seen, and no one in the marketplace noticed. Indeed, many of them were robed in the same minimalist fashion. She relaxed then, suddenly realizing that although Meela tended to dress with more modesty Anck-su-Namun adorned herself like this frequently.

But no...she didn't do this to herself. It was forced on her by servants of Pharaoh...

The feeling of being watched grew stronger, and her gaze jumped to the far end of the bazaar.

The Temple of Osiris. The part of her that was Anck-su-Namun recognized it immediately, and the part that was Meela saw that artists' recreations of the crumbled temple had been somewhat inaccurate, not to mention entirely unable to convey the sheer majesty of the place. Her wide eyes took in soaring columns topped with lotus capitals and coated in color-coded hieroglyphics. Twentieth-century ruins were always devoid of color, the paint having worn off long ago. But this was no ruin. It was a magnificent temple, glowing with color and life, humming with activity, dominating the skyline. And there, standing atop the short set of stairs by the main entrance...

"Imhotep!" Her heart leapt into her throat, and she dashed forward to greet him.

He smiled a slightly sarcastic but endearing smile and reached out a hand toward her, the sleeve of his black cloak fluttering in the breeze. His smooth, bronzed skin shone in the sunlight, making him seem like a living statue. An aura of authority and confidence radiated from him, and his dark brown eyes beamed love in her direction.

Her bare feet flew across the stones. She lightly scaled the steps to throw herself into his arms--

--and found herself sprawled in the dust in the middle of a lifeless ruin.

"Meela, are you all right?" the Curator asked. He set aside the two suitcases and stooped to help her up. "What in the world were you doing? You were in some sort of trance."

"I... I..." She stood on shaky legs, disoriented to suddenly be clad in modest khakis, a navy blue silk blouse, and high leather boots. She ran a hand through her hair, but no beads greeted her searching fingers. "I..." she tried again. She tilted her head back to look at the rows of stone columns, now stripped of any traces of color. Many were tipped over, crumbling into the sand from whence they came. And, of course, there was no sign of Imhotep. "He was here," she said, her voice sounding frighteningly small.

"Your priest?"

She was briefly startled to think of him as "her" priest, but she nodded. "Yes. Imhotep." She explained her vivid experience, and the Curator listened patiently.

She waited for him to say something, to judge her sanity now, but he merely picked up the suitcases again. "The inn is this way."

"The...inn?"

He walked away from her, and she forced herself to follow, dragging her feet as she tore herself away from the shadows of the temple.


	4. What Dreams May Come

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter Four: What Dreams May Come

Meela stared through the darkness at the discolored ceiling of her room in the inn. There had been a leak in the ceiling at some point in the past, but infrequent rains made fixing it a low priority. The walls were thin; she could hear the Curator snoring next door. Her bed was comfortable enough, she supposed. That wasn't the reason she couldn't sleep. Her mind was wide awake, in conflict with her exhausted body.

She rolled over, irrationally angry with her sheets, and buried her face in the pillow. Maybe she could smother the disquiet welling up in her mind. But no, all that happened was she cut off her own supply of oxygen, and the musty smell of the pillow made her feel like sneezing. She flopped onto her back and gave a deep sigh that expressed disgust with the entire world, including herself.

She wasn't going to sleep. That much was obvious.

She flipped on the lamp on the bedside table. Might as well make use of it, after she had to fight the desk clerk for a working light bulb. As the darkness fled, the ugliness of the room again became evident. That wasn't helping.

Keeping her mind purposely blank, she began to get dressed again. If she stopped to analyze what she was doing, she wouldn't do it. Her tired fingers failed to work the clasp on her necklace, so she left it on the table. She hopped awkwardly to force her left foot into her boot and stumbled to the door. There was no lock to worry about. The hallway was empty at this late hour. The street was almost as unpopulated.

This felt so familiar, too... Sneaking out in the middle of the night, hurrying toward the Temple of Osiris... The start of a smile faded away from her face. This time, Imhotep wouldn't be waiting for her.

The temple was deserted. Tourists had long since retired to their hotels. Even the pickpockets and drunks were elsewhere. The high pillars were silhouetted against the clear night sky, which in her eyes was suddenly full of ancient Egyptian constellations. Aside from distant music from a nightclub and a braying donkey down the street, all she heard was her booted feet on the cobblestones.

Like a sleepwalker, she meandered through the columns and empty, crumbling corridors to Imhotep's chambers. She didn't bother wondering how she knew the way. The door had rotted away, leaving an empty mouth of an entrance. Stars winked through the gap where the ceiling would have been. Only a red velvet rope stopped her from entering the dark room. That was easily put aside, and she carefully walked into the shadows.

"Imhotep?" she said quietly, not really expecting an answer. She didn't get one.

An overwhelming loneliness surged through her, and unexpected tears flooded her eyes. She didn't understand how she could be lonely for a man she hadn't met in this lifetime, but she was. She missed him.

She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold. She had to find him. Wherever he was, whatever it took, she had to find him. For her own sake. For his sake. The drive to reunite with him was frighteningly strong, urgent and real.

Meela's knees failed her, and she eased down on the sandy floor, feeling her way in the dark. "I promise, Imhotep...I don't know how, but I'm going to find you again. I swear it in the name of Hathor, goddess of love." Her voice echoed in the stone chamber, confirming her words. "I will find you."

Fatigue swept over her like an ocean wave, and she curled up in the sand with her eyes closed.

The next thing she knew, a very irritated tour guide was waking her up, telling her to go somewhere else, preferably hell. He probably thought she was drunk or crazy. Maybe both. Mumbling apologies, she stumbled away and headed for the inn. It was still quite early, judging by the sun angle, but the marketplace was already bustling. She elbowed her way through the crowd. It was odd--what wasn't, lately?--but not unprecedented to fall asleep in the High Priest's chambers. An ironic smile crossed her face. She felt bolder, today, having verbalized her resolve. She would find Imhotep and figure out how to break the curse that had plagued them both for three thousand years. But first she needed breakfast.

  
Fortified with a meal of pancakes, greasy hashbrowns and bruised fruit, she returned to the temple with the Curator in tow. The same annoyed tour guide refused to let her conduct a self-guided tour. Even if he wasn't doubting her sobriety or sanity, he was understandably reluctant to admit a tousled woman carrying a pickaxe. She wasn't discouraged, however, since yelling, "Look! I recognize that statue!" wouldn't do anything to convince the Curator. She had other plans. Thus the pickaxe.

"Where are you going?" he asked, frowning as she veered off the street toward the river.

"Just watch," she said with a sly smile. Keeping a silence the sphinx would have envied, she carefully led him along the bank of the Nile until the noise of the city dwindled to a low hum. No crocodiles or hippopotami were in the way, and with nothing more than muddy shoes they arrived at a crumbled portion of the overhanging embankment.

"And what is this?" the Curator asked when it became apparent this was their destination.

"Watch and learn," Meela said, throwing aside her backpack. "And believe." She began hacking at the landslide with her pickaxe.

He gave her another of those looks that cast serious doubts on her sanity. She'd been the target of far too many of those lately. "And you hope to find what here?"

"I don't hope, I know I'll find a secret passageway that leads straight to Seti's palace. It was built to let him escape should anything untoward happen--not that a ruler descended from the gods themselves would need an escape route," she said with a heavy dose of sarcasm. Her face darkened further when she added, "Imhotep and I had planned to use this when we eloped, but we never had the chance..."

The Curator stood back in silence for a few minutes, watching her doggedly clearing away debris from the mouth of what was apparently an ancient tunnel. "You're really serious about this, aren't you?" he asked at length.

She didn't stop digging to answer. "I've never been more serious about anything in either of my lives."

He was quiet a moment longer, then sighed. "I'll go get a shovel."

She paused in mid-swing and grinned appreciatively at him. "You won't regret this." She slammed the pick-axe into the hill with renewed vigor.

"Time will tell..." he said over his shoulder.

The Curator pulled the watch from his pocket yet again. Meela shot him an annoyed and worried look.

"We really must be going," he said.

"No!" She swung the pickaxe into the wall in a movement that had become painfully familiar in the past day. "We're almost there, I swear!"

"Meela, I said you had one weekend. It's Sunday evening, the light is failing, and our boat leaves in an hour. You'll have to just admit failure and--"

"I will do no such thing! Another few minutes, and I'll break through!"

"This tunnel collapsed untold centuries ago. You can't just--"

Some deity took pity on her, and her pick broke through a crust of limestone, and she staggered forward with a yelp. "Aha! I told you so!" She dropped to her knees and wriggled through the jagged opening in the hillside. "Bring the lantern!" her muffled voice ordered.

Intrigued in spite of himself, the Curator obeyed. It was a tighter fit for him to squeeze through the opening, but once on the other side he was able to stand quite comfortably. He held the lantern high, peering with academic delight at the elaborate chamber in which they had emerged. Statues of the god Set lined the hallway, which was supported by ornate columns. Deep dust obscured the marble floor. Hieroglyphics covered the walls, decorating and informing with timeless grace. The Curator gaped and stammered, "This is...remarkable!"

Meela smiled smugly. "This is more than remarkable. This is Seti's palace. Buried under the sands, preserved like a time capsule. I told you so!"

"I...I..." he stammered.

"Now do you believe me? How else would I have known about this secret passage? How else would I have known where to dig? How else would I know so much about everything?"

The Curator inhaled a chestful of dusty, stale air and sighed. "I...I don't know what to say! This...!" He held the lantern closer to the wall and translated the hieroglyphics there, his lips moving silently as he read.

"It says, 'Palace kitchens this way.' You'd probably be more interested in this one," she said gleefully.

He carefully stepped over to where she was pointing, the lantern illuminating carvings that until that moment had not seen light for untold centuries.

She translated aloud with flawless pronunciation while his shaking hand followed along. "'May Set look kindly upon his glorious majesty, ruler of Upper and Lower Egypt, Pharaoh Seti the First, living forever!' Don't you just love the irony of that last part?" She buffed her fingernails theatrically on her lapel and waited for the Curator to find his voice.

He stared at the inscription for several long seconds, then stepped back from it and her, regarding her with a look that bordered on fear. "You...you really are... You really did... You're..."

"You believe me now?"

He looked pale in the flickering lantern light. He nodded several times, quickly, and steadied himself with a hand on the wall.

She gave a smug smile and headed for the tunnel. "Good." Her aching arms were a small price to pay for seeing that look of stunned comprehension of his face. "Well, don't just stand there. We've got work to do!"

Still overwhelmed by the realization of who she really was, he merely stared at her dumbly.

"Imhotep's waiting for us...somewhere." She slipped back out into the light of day, and he scurried after her in sudden subservience.


	5. Lock and Key

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter Five: Lock and Key

Back at Saqqara, the other students were surprised by the Curator's dramatic change in attitude. Meela had gone from star pupil to crazy outcast and now back to number-one student again. It couldn't be that he actually believed her...could it? There were a number of sordid rumors going around campus about what exactly Meela had done over the weekend to change the Curator's mind, but she ignored them. There were more important things to do besides protect her reputation.

Both the Curator and Meela wracked their brains for leads to follow in their search for Imhotep. One dead end after another did nothing to discourage them. Three thousand years of cover-ups, superstition and history wouldn't unravel overnight, after all.

Meela spent all her spare time at the library over the following weeks, systematically going over every volume on the shelves. More often than not she fell asleep at a corner table with her head resting on a thick book. Her dreams always took her back to her life as Anck-su-Namun in an odd swirl of memory and fantasy. Imhotep was a frequent visitor in those dreams, and on those occasions she woke up with a serene smile on her face and rejuvenated determination.

So it was that Meela found herself alone in the library late one evening, poring over a yellowed manuscript on ancient Egyptian funerary practices. The librarians had given up kicking her out at closing time; she protested too loudly. Instead they let her stay as long as she liked, provided she shelved her own materials when she was done. Since she knew her way around as well as the librarians by that point, this was a welcome compromise.

Meela's eyes burned from hours of close reading, but she pressed on. Judging by the layer of dust on this volume, it hadn't been taken off the shelf in years. She didn't know why; it was a fascinating account of Egyptian burial customs. This chapter was discussing the lost necropolis of Hamunaptra without blathering on about lost gold like most did. She felt she was on the verge of some important discovery, if only she could--

"Meela Pasha?" a baritone voice interrupted her thoughts.

She looked up with a jolt, dropping her pencil. A towering man with large, piercing eyes materialized out of the shadows, stepping into the pool of light created by her small lamp. He was swathed in robes of a rich crimson, contrasting and complimenting the dark chocolate of his skin. The most alarming thing was the heavy scimitar thrust through his belt. His hand wasn't on the handle, but judging by his well-built physique he wouldn't have any trouble putting it to use.

Meela stood up and backed away. Blind fear quickly melted into angry defensiveness, and some previously-unknown instinct made her adopt a fighting stance. She had no training in martial arts (that she remembered) but the urge to swing out and kick the intruder in the head was so strong, and she felt so irrationally confident that she could do so, that she surmised Anck-su-Namun had been instructed in such matters. "Who are you, how did you get in here, and what do you want?" she snarled, her voice startlingly loud in the silent library.

"Who I am and how I got here are of no importance," his deep voice rumbled. "You are Meela Pasha?"

"That depends."

"You seek to raise a force of darkness from ancient Egypt?"

Her frown of defiance shifted into one of annoyance. "Imhotep is not a force of darkness," she spat.

"Whatever he once was, he is now bound to the law of the Hom-Dai."

"What do you know--or care--about Imhotep and the Hom-Dai?" Contemplating the details of that curse sickened her heart.

His stance infuriatingly relaxed, the intruder smiled ever so slightly. "I represent a group with similar goals to yours."

"You seek Imhotep?"

"We seek one bound by a similar curse, one who asked too much of the gods and was both cursed and granted power...enough power to conquer or destroy the world."

She lowered an eyebrow.

"Meela Pasha, I believe we can be of help to each other. You seek Imhotep. We seek the Scorpion King."

"The who what?" she said, not believing her ears. "He was a myth...wasn't he?"

"Did you not believe, just a short time ago, that living mummies were a myth?" he asked with a sardonic twist of his full lips. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio--"

"--than are dreamt of in your philosophy," she finished. "Hamlet, Act One." If this stranger was a crackpot, at least he was a well-read one. She adopted a slightly less guarded posture. "You're saying the legend of the Scorpion King is fact?"

"It is indeed. And if we can find the Bracelet of Anubis by 1933, the Year of the Scorpion, we can raise Anubis' Army and conquer the world."

"You're leaving out a rather important detail, aren't you?" she asked. "If I remember my legends correctly, to take command of the Army you must first kill the Scorpion King."

He nodded. "A task impossible for a mere human. But for one with the powers of the Hom-Dai at his disposal..."

Her eyes widened. "You're saying...?"

A devious smile twisted his dark features.

The possibilities flooded her brain, and a similar smile took over her face, as well. "I think we might be of use to each other, after all..."

"I thought you'd see it that way." His grin revealed a line of stunningly white teeth.

She held out a hand, and he shook it with an almost painfully strong grip. 

"I am Meela Pasha," she confirmed her identity. "Formerly known as Anck-su-Namun."

"And I am Lock-Nah."


	6. Long Time No See

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter Six: Long Time No See

A few weeks later, Meela stepped off a train in Cairo, squinting into the sun from beneath a wide-brimmed hat. She was dressed in a charcoal gray blazer and a form-fitting skirt, and carried a leather satchel at her side. Her research had inevitably led her here, into the shadow of the pyramids. She had seen them before, of course, but they never failed to amaze her. The jostling crowd soon forced her to stop standing there, staring dreamily at the massive monuments. It was just as well, as her train had arrived later than scheduled, and if she didn't get to the museum soon it would be closed. There were plenty of things to do in Cairo to keep herself occupied until the next day, but she was eager to talk to certain people there.

The academic and archaeological circles were abuzz with the supposed discovery of the lost city of Hamunaptra. The news had emerged very soon after her bizarre out-of-body experience, and she doubted it was a coincidence. An expedition had set out to find the ancient necropolis but only three people returned alive. The one American and two Britons were tight-lipped about the whole affair, and never publicly claimed to have found Hamunaptra. They had found something, though. The bags of gold artifacts they returned with obviously didn't materialize out of thin air. They said they had found them in a small ruin which was abruptly covered up by a sandstorm and which they were never able to find again.

Like a handful of others, Meela found this tale hard to swallow. Such a tremendous discovery would have been documented carefully with latitude and longitude and such. Yes, it was possible to run across a site during a sandstorm and then not be able to find your way back later, but... The timing and general feel of the whole affair told Meela there was more to it than met the eye. She strongly suspected there was some connection with their tale and her own bizarre experience in her old body.

Then there was the matter of the plagues. She was painfully familiar by now with the details of the Hom-Dai. A slew of plagues was a part of the package, and the bizarre events that had taken place here in Cairo just a few months ago matched perfectly. Water turning into blood, a freak meteor shower that rained fire on the city, an unpredicted eclipse, an epidemic of skin lesions...the skeptics fumbled for rational explanations, but Meela knew perfectly well what had happened. It was so obvious there might as well be a huge sign proclaiming, "IMHOTEP WAS HERE," she thought with a smirk.

Yet the plagues had stopped as soon as they had begun, and Imhotep was nowhere to be seen now. Moreover, Meela didn't sense him. In her visions she was always able to sense when he was near, even before seeing him. There was no reason to believe it wouldn't work that way in real life, too. He definitely wasn't in Cairo or environs. Another dead end, as opposed to the undead one she sought.

She had pieced it all together, drawing on her instincts, research, and memory of her out-of-body jaunt to that mysterious ruin. The ruin had to be none other than Hamunaptra, and if trio with their gold artifacts weren't somehow related to both Imhotep and the lost necropolis, she'd French-kiss a camel.

Meela strode boldly into the Museum of Antiquities. Most tourists were wrapping up their visit, but closing time was still over a half-hour away. She wandered through the exhibits until she overheard the ones she was searching for.

"...can't believe this is finally done! I thought I'd never get them all back in order! So many books!" a British woman was saying.

"It was a mess. I hope you're not as careless with your housekeeping," teased a male American voice.

"I most certainly am, Mister O'Connell!" the woman indignantly replied. "This was merely an accident! It could have happened to anyone!"

"Yeah," he said with a derisive sniff, "anyone who's clumsy as an--"

"Do you want me to marry you or not?"

"Of course!"

"Then I'd advise you not to finish that sentence."

"Okay, okay!" he said with a laugh. "Keep your shirt on! Or, on second thought..."

The woman giggled a little, and there was the unmistakable "smack" of a kiss.

"What am I going to do with you?" the woman asked in fond despair.

"I can think of a few things..."

"Rick!" she chided.

A second male voice was heard, this one with a British accent similar to the woman's. "If you two are done acting like a pair of lovesick puppies for the moment, I'd appreciate a little help over here!"

The woman gave an embarrassed laugh. "Oh, of course. Sorry, Johnathan. I just got a little, um, distracted."

"That's been happening an awful lot lately..."

Meela turned a corner and finally located the source of the voices. Two men were unpacking a crate of books while a woman eagerly peered over their shoulders at the new arrivals. Meela momentarily held her breath. It was them. The three people from Hamunaptra! The woman was the Princess Nefertiri reincarnated, and the other two were vaguely familiar, as well. If she only had full access to her memories...

"Oh! The latest study on Ramses the Great! I didn't know that had been published yet!" Nefertiri--or whatever her name was now--snaked a slender arm between the others and grabbed a volume from the crate.

"Fine," the dark-haired man with the British accent said, standing up with a hand on his lower back. "If you like it so much, you unpack them all. I need a drink." He wandered off, rubbing his sore back and complaining under his breath.

"Johnathan, you always need a drink," the woman formerly known as Nefertiri said with a sigh.

"Now then, where were we?" the lighter-haired man said, leaning over to steal a kiss from her.

Meela stepped forward to interrupt before either of them got too "distracted" again. "Excuse me, do you work here?" she asked politely.

The other woman looked slightly embarrassed, ran a hand quickly through her disheveled hair, and nudged her companion away. "Er...yes. I'm Evelyn Carnahan. May I help you?"

"I hope so. I'm a graduate student in Egyptology--"

Evelyn's eyes lit up with interest.

"--and I'm doing a study on ancient curses. I was just wondering if perhaps--"

"Let me guess," the American interrupted. "You wanna know about Hamunaptra?"

"Well...yes. Among other things," Meela replied.

"It doesn't exist."

"But--"

"No, listen. Every day somebody comes in here asking us about Hamunaptra. And I'm tellin' you, we didn't find it. We found a pocket of artifacts in the desert, loaded up some gold, lost the place in a sandstorm, and that's it. You've read it all in the papers already. No lost cities. Okay?"

Evelyn was somewhat less rude. "Honey, why don't you go get a drink with Johnathan?"

"But Evy--"

"Oh, hush. Don't you trust me?"

"Not a bit," he said with a crooked grin.

She rolled her eyes and shooed him away. "Now, then, Miss...?"

"Pasha."

"Miss Pasha. What my fiancé said was the truth. We didn't find Hamunaptra."

"But just for the sake of argument, let's say you did. Would it have been...south of here?"

"It's a myth. I really can't say."

Meela fought back a smile. Nefertiri never had been a very good liar, except when covering up her affair with a Med-Jai warrior. Suddenly, Meela realized that the American man who had just departed was that very same paramour. No wonder he seemed familiar! She stifled a frown. Everybody else got reunited with their soulmates in subsequent incarnations. Why were she and Imhotep kept apart?

She returned her attention to the task at hand. Evelyn had an aura of sweetness around her that Meela found oddly annoying, but she managed to remain completely civil. "Yes, yes, I understand," she said with a gracious smile. "But just tell me...what do you think Hamunaptra would be like? If it were real, I mean."

Evelyn shifted her weight and began putting books on shelves. "I'd really rather not talk about it, if you don't mind."

"And about the recent plagues...what do you suppose caused them?" she pressed.

Evelyn stopped puttering with books and regarded her curiously. "Do I...know you?"

Surely the memories of her life as Nefertiri weren't available to her...were they?

Meela shrugged. "I don't believe so."

"Oh. Anyway, those so-called plagues were nothing, really. Just a series of rather odd coincidences."

Meela bit back a smirk. Definitely not a convincing liar. "Oh really? They reminded me of an ancient Egyptian curse called the Hom-Dai. Have you heard of it?"

Evelyn dropped a book on her foot and made a visible effort not to swear. "I...um...don't believe so."

Meela pretended to believe her. "I was just thinking that perhaps someone had found Hamunaptra and stirred up forces related to the Hom-Dai. Is that possible?"

Evelyn stammered awkwardly for a moment, pretending to be very interested in the binding of the book in her hand. "I'm sorry, Miss Pasha, but I really don't time for this sort of nonsense right now."

"Just one more question, also related to my research," Meela said, realizing that her welcome was quickly wearing thin. "Have you ever heard of a priest from the era of Seti the First named Imhotep?"

Evelyn's eyes were in danger of popping out of her head. "I... No!"

"What about a woman from the same era named Anck-su-Namun?"

"I'm sorry, I can't help you." Evelyn dropped the book back in the box and hurried from the room.

Meela watched her go, both amused at her reaction and unsatisfied with the depth of her answers. She slipped out a side entrance and watched until the other man, the Briton, returned to the museum from the nearest bar. He was still toting a brown bottle of something fortifying that was rapidly emptying. When he saw her standing by the entrance, posed against the doorframe with her shapely legs displayed beneath her knee-length skirt, he stopped in his tracks with a goofy grin.

"Well, hello!" he said with a painfully obvious visual survey of her curves.

Her ability to judge character was usually good, and this case was no exception. He'd tell her what she needed to know, if she played her cards right. "Hello," she purred. "Johnathan Carnahan?"

His voice was slurred with drink. "Thatsh my name, don' wear it out," he said with a chuckle that made it seem as if he had invented the phrase at that moment and was exceedingly proud of it. "And, uh..." He attempted to slide up to her gracefully but stumbled a little and just managed to stay vertical. "What's a loverly thing like you doing jus' shtanding around 'ere?"

She pretended to be flattered. "I was waiting to talk to you, of course."

He sobered up slightly and looked at her with a wary eye. "You're not with Omar, are you? Because I sh-wear I didn't know that was his shister."

She stifled a laugh, instead turning her amusement into a beguiling smile. "No, no. I'm Annie," she said, twisting her ancient name into an untraceable pseudonym. "And I heard you know all about Hamunaptra and that--" she forced herself to say "--beastly mummy creature. I'd love to hear all about it. I just adore scary stories, if I've got someone like yourself to make me feel safe..." She stepped up to him smoothly and feigned picking a speck of lint off his cravat. "Could we maybe find someplace nice and private to talk?"

Johnathan nearly fell over. "Well, shince you put it that way!"

Before long they were at a table in a open-air cafe down the street. Meela threw her most potent feminine vibes in his direction, and between her flirtations and the vodka Johnathan was soon most informative.

"Oh, yesh, we found Hamu-- Harpoon-- Hambone-- Hamaptra--"

"Hamunaptra?" she supplied.

"Yesh, yesh, that's it. Bloody awful name for a lost sh-idy, that."

"And what did you find there?" she prompted.

"Well, not much, at first. Then we were jusht minding our own business when whomp!" He slammed on the table to accentuate the last word, startling some of the nearby patrons. "This hee-yooge sarg-- sarc-- sark-cough-er..."

"Sarcophagus?"

"Yesh! Sarcogga-- Yesh, that was it. The bloody thing fell through the sheeling, right on top of ush!

"Oh my!" she said, regarding him with wide eyes.

"Well, my shister, Evy, had this key thing that she yoo-shed to open it, and what did we find inshide but a mummy!"

"No!" It took all Meela's patience to stay pleasant and not strangle this tipsy Englishman into getting to the point.

"Yesh! A great big juicy mummy!"

She wrinkled her nose delicately, inwardly mournful.

"The sh-trangest thing. Usually those fellows are all dushty and shriveled up, you know, but this chap was shtill decompostering...er, decomposhing. You know."

"Yes, yes." She somehow managed to keep a smile on her face despite the grief blooming inside. Imhotep...

"Sho later Evy wash reading from thish big black book the othersh found--"

"Black book? What black book?"

"Hmm? Oh, the book. The Book of the Dead, they called it."

Meela nodded, truly wishing she was able to take notes. "And what happened then?"

"Well, to make a long shtory short--" He nuzzled her feet with his under the table, and she tried to maintain her come-hither look instead of kicking him in the shin. "The next thing we knew, there were locusts and sh-carab beetles all over the place." He took a swig from his bottle and rubbed compulsively at his upper arm. "Beashtly little crittersh!"

"And the mummy?"

He leaned forward confidentially, overwhelming her with the vodka on his breath. "The bugger came back to life!" he announced in what was intended to be a whisper. "Sh-cared the living daylights out of us all, I'm not ashamed to tell you! And then he sh-tole the eyes and tongue from one of the Americans!"

"How horrible!"

"Well, we got the hell out of there, as you could imagine! But one-sh we got back to Cairo, we thought we were shafe, right? But damned if the blighter didn't follow us, and shtarted shucking apart the rest of the Americans! To make things even worsh, more plagues came along with him. I shwear, it was like shomething shtraight out of Genesish! And the mummy fellow, Imhotep--"

Meela's heart leapt. "Imhotep?"

"That was hish name. Imhotep. The more people he shucked the life out of, he shtarted regenerating hish body!"

She leaned forward intently. "What did he look like?"

"Bald. Pretty shtrong, too."

"Was he...handsome?" she couldn't help asking.

"Not as handshome as me, I asshure you," he said with a cheeky smile.

It took all her self-control not to roll her eyes.

"Anyway, that rotten bashtard kidnapped my shister! Sheemed he needed her to bring his dead girlfriend back to life."

Meela's sat up with her spine rod-straight. "What?"

"Yesh. She had shome crazy name... Anuckshoo-- Anucknuck--"

"Anck-su-Namun," she said, losing patience with his inebriated mind.

"Wow! Yesh, that was it. How did you know?"

"I'm studying Egyptology," she explained quickly.

"Ah. Sho yesh, this mummy fellow wanted to bring her back to life before he took over the world or whatever, and he had to kill my shister to do it! Well, I couldn't shtand for that!" Johnathan chugged the last of the vodka, tipping the bottle far back to get the last drop. "Me and a couple other chaps headed shtraight back to Hammer-- Hammock--"

"Hamunaptra."

"That place, yesh. We barged right in with guns blazshing and shaved my shister Evy!"

Meela blinked in confusion, wondering why they would shave Evelyn, and then realized what he meant. "You saved her? How?"

"I found this great big golden book that was short of like the opposhite of the black one, from before. It had this shpell in it to take away the mummy's powersh."

Meela narrowed her eyes, guessing the rest.

"Oncesh he wash mortal, all it took was a shord--" Judging by the stabbing motion he was making with his empty hand, that meant "sword." "And viola! One dead mummy! Well, dead again, I mean. Not undead. Re-dead?" He stared intently at the empty vodka bottle as if the correct term was etched there.

Meela frowned, greatly disturbed to hear of her beloved's demise. If he was dead...now what? She hardly dared to contemplate it. But there was one more important detail to be clarified. "So he didn't succeed in raising his girlfriend?"

"Oh, yesh, he did. I forgot that part. But I used the golden book to shummon a group of sholdier mummies, and they hacked her to bits."

She looked away, trembling a little now. "And...your sister?"

"I told you, I reshcued her."

"But you said Imhotep needed her to bring his girlfriend to life."

"He needed her to give hish girlfriend a new body. Her old one was...well, old! All mummy-fied, you know."

"I see."

"But he didn't get to that part. That'sh why those soldier ones killed her so easily. Or re-killed her. You know what I mean." He shook the empty bottle mournfully, obviously wishing for a refill.

Meela put a hand to her mouth and lowered her eyes, too overwhelmed with his story to ask any more questions.

"Are you all right? Need a drink?"

She wanted to say yes to both questions, but all she could do was nod.

"I sheem to be fresh out," he apologized.

"I should probably be going," she said, shakily getting to her feet.

"Don't you need a little...you know...'comforting,' after hearing such a scary story?" he hinted with his best attempt at a charming smile.

"Um...I don't think so." She turned to leave. "Oh, one more thing..."

He looked up expectantly with unfocused eyes. "Yesh?"

"What happened to those books?"

"The black one and gold one? Buried when the shidy collapsed."

"The city collapsed?"

"Yesh," he sighed. "The whole kit 'n' caboodle, down under the shands. We only managed to get a few bagsh of gold and artifacts before she went under. A crying shame, I tell you."

"So both of the books and Imhotep's body were buried when Hamunaptra collapsed into the sands?" she summarized.

"Yesh, yesh, exactly. Are you shure you don't want a drink? Maybe a nice walk by the river..."

She wanted to verbalize her doubt about his ability to walk, but instead she just shook her head and started to back away. "No. But thanks for a very...interesting story, Mr. Carnahan."

"My pleashure, Miss."

Meela's heart throbbed with excitement and despair and she hurried away from her informant. The details he had provided were invaluable, but the situation had suddenly gotten much more complicated. She clasped her hands to her chest and sighed. Oh, Imhotep...


	7. What Lies Beneath?

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter Seven: What Lies Beneath?

Lock-Nah's men scoured the desert around Cairo in search of some trace of Hamunaptra, but to no avail. The stubborn descendants of Pharaoh's bodyguards, the Med-Jai, hampered their search whenever possible. The Curator's academic approach yielded similarly void results. There were plenty of myths about Hamunaptra, but nothing credible surfaced. Attempts to glean further information from the survivors of the last expedition also failed. Much to Meela's jealousy, Evelyn married her lover from her previous life as Nefertiri, now known as Rick O'Connell. They moved to London along with her loose-lipped brother, Johnathan, and surveillance became vastly more difficult.

The only small victory came when, while excavating the ruins of Seti's temple, she uncovered an ancient necklace that she recognized as having belonged to Anck-su-Namun. The Curator had dropped his initial skepticism and completely believed her. She happily hired a jeweler to make a replica of the golden necklace before it was shipped off to a museum. The modern copy was a tangible connection to her past life, and she wore it nearly every day, whether it went with her outfit or not. However precious, though, the necklace was a dead-end in the search for Imhotep.

Weeks turned into months; months turned into years. The Year of the Scorpion was fast approaching, and if she couldn't find Imhotep by then she would lose the help of Lock-Nah and the others seeking the Scorpion King.

Meela was discouraged but didn't lose hope. Destiny, Hathor, luck...one of them would lead her to her true love, sooner or later. The key was finding Hamunaptra.

Finally, early in 1933, Meela got fed up with the failures of others and decided to take matters into her own hands. She bought a pair of the best-trained camels she could find, gathered an outfit of supplies, and convinced Lock-Nah to come along for help and protection. It was difficult not to look upon this expedition as her last hope, but she tried to stay optimistic as she set out from Cairo with Lock-Nah. They rode into the desert in a random direction, keeping conversation to a bare minimum. She needed to concentrate.

It had been several hours since the last sign of civilization. Waves of heat danced on the horizon, giving the illusion of water in the midst of an endless ocean of sand. Meela closed her eyes and swayed with the camel's monotonous gait, trying to shut out all distractions.

Help me find my true love, Hathor... Help me find you, Imhotep... Where are you, my love?

The warm, dusty smell of the desert tickled her nostrils. The equatorial sun warmed her skin through her black clothes. It had only been ten minutes since her last drink from the canteen, but already her mouth was dry. The heat of the desert... The heat of passion? Imhotep?

The swaying of the camel made her sleepy, like the rocking of a docked ship. Drowsiness... Surrendering to sleep in Imhotep's arms?

There had to be a connection. Something she was missing. Some clue. Some instinct. Something. Anything!

She closed her eyes more tightly and tried to fix an image of him in her mind. Other details from her previous life were hazy, but her mental picture of Imhotep was agonizingly clear.

The scarab pendant gleaming against his chest. A gold-trimmed black robe enveloping his stately frame. An aura of authority, self-control and confidence. His lips twisting into a sardonic smile. A rare chuckle from deep in his chest. Body smooth, shaven, oiled, shining in the torchlight. Muscles not exaggerated but statuesque. His husky voice in her ear, whispering promises of a life together that could never be. His hands moving over her body at just the right speed, in just the right places, igniting blazes of passion that burned away the corrupt control of the outside world, if only for a time. His deep brown eyes gazing into the core of her soul. His strong arms surrounding her, holding her tight and secure as she wept at the impossible horror of her bondage to a cruel Pharaoh. His hands bathing her wounds, tending to her bruises, soothing aches both physical and spiritual. His heart beating in time with hers, both surrendering to her and accepting her surrender. Protecting, comforting, loving, listening...

"South-east."

"What?" Lock-Nah said.

"Imhotep. Hamunaptra. South-east of here." Meela's eyes were still closed, and she barely recognized her voice. She had no idea how she knew, but something was pulling her in that direction, and she certainly wasn't about to question it.

Lock-Nah shrugged and nudged his camel in onto a south-easterly course. Meela's camel followed automatically.

Renewed hope coursed in her veins. Please...

After a few hours Lock-Nah gave up trying to ask her how she knew where she was going. She wouldn't or couldn't explain, and remained deep in thought. Her eyes were never more than halfway open. She hardly dared breathe for fear of breaking the spell that was guiding her.

"Anck-su-Namun."

Her eyes finally snapped open. "Did you say something?" she asked Lock-Nah.

"No." He shook his head.

She looked around at the featureless desert and surrounding cliffs. No one was there. Had it been the wind?

"Anck-su-Namun."

It wasn't the wind, although it sounded much like it. It was a voice that apparently only she could hear.

The feeling of being watched swept over her again, and she twisted around in the saddle to look to the side. There, poking out of a dune, was a stone pillar covered in hieroglyphics. "Look! Look look look!" she shouted, nearly falling off the camel in her excitement.

"What? Where?" Lock-Nah swung around to look.

"There, in the sand! A pillar! This is it!"

"Hamunaptra?"

"Yes!" She vaulted off her camel and began brushing sand from the stone, tracing the hieroglyphics with a chipped fingernail. "This is it! Hamunaptra!" She could have hugged that stone column. "At last! And he's here! I can sense it!" She pressed her cheek against the baked stone and inhaled the scent of eons.

"Anck-su-Namun."

It was the faintest psychic whisper, like the sighing of a breeze through the palms, but she knew without a doubt what it meant. That silly drunkard had been correct. In some form, somehow, Imhotep was here. Her soul recognized the imprint of his.

She stood up and put her hands on her hips, beaming with a wide smile. "Lock-Nah?"

"Yeah?" he said from atop his camel.

"We've got some digging to do."

After years of frustration and failures, everything was suddenly moving very quickly. The Year of the Scorpion was here. They--no, she-- had found Hamunaptra, where without a doubt Imhotep lay. Aside from finding his body, it was now essential to locate the two books. One black, one gold, each with unimaginable powers. The black Book of the Dead would bring Imhotep back to life. The golden Book of Amun-Ra was also vital to find, since it could do quite the opposite to him.

The Curator handled most of the sticky details, getting excavation permits and hiring locals to do the digging. Lock-Nah provided security in the form of heavily-armed red-robed men. The workers were in fear of them, and in awe of Meela. There were murmurs that she had some dark powers, as she knew simply by wandering through the site where they should dig next. Without use of a divining rod, she pinpointed the main entrance to the city and other landmarks. She still had only a vague sense of where Imhotep was resting, however...if a man in the throes of the Hom-Dai could be said to be resting.

The workers kept toiling in the excavations until late at night under the glare of torches and spotlights. Meela surveyed their progress ceaselessly, hoping for some clue to her beloved's position. She retired only when the lights went off and the workers trudged to their tents. One night the Curator managed to convince her to take a break from her vigil, and they joined Lock-Nah by the campfire.

The hulking warrior looked up as they approached. "Are we getting close?" he asked impatiently.

Meela's brow creased in frustration. "I don't know. I think so." She dropped into an Indian-legged position beside him and closed her eyes to soak in the firelight, welcoming the respite from the night's chill. Outsiders found it odd that a place as notoriously hot as the desert became so cool at night.

The Curator lowered himself onto a cushion beside her and prodded the fire with a stick. "There is plenty of time left in the year."

"And the Bracelet?" Lock-Nah pressed.

"We've traced it to a certain temple in Thebes. Now we just need to get it in our possession."

"An important little detail," Lock-Nah said grouchily.

If there was anywhere in the world Meela wanted to be, aside from here with Imhotep, it was Thebes. "I should go for it. I remember that temple, where the vault is. Little Miss Perfect Nefertiri did an adequate job of seeing to its protection. I'm sure the Bracelet is still there."

The Curator shook his head. "No. You're needed here. We can't have you getting distracted. I've contacted a few other...gentlemen...to handle it."

She raised an eyebrow, well aware of his shadier acquaintances. They probably could "handle it," and he was right. Her place was here, at the dig. She was both Meela and Anck-su-Namun, but she couldn't be in two places at once. "Very well," she said at last.

"And we're agreed on the details once all this is over?" Lock-Nah asked sternly.

"Yes," Meela said with an impatient sigh. It was all in writing, but she knew it well enough to recite, "Once we take control of Anubis' Army and take over the world, Imhotep will be emperor of the earth, I'll be his queen, and we'll restore Egypt to its former glory. We'll delegate the operation of the Army to you, Lock-Nah, to keep order as you see fit..." She smirked at his dark grin and the bloodthirsty glint in his obsidian eyes. "And you, my dear Hafez, will have every museum and university in the world as your playground." The Curator closed his eyes with a dreamy smile, imagining the possibilities. "A more than satisfactory arrangement, don't you agree?"

Lock-Nah nodded, and the Curator rubbed his hands together in an embarrassingly theatrical expression of diabolical anticipation.

She stood and brushed sand off her khakis. "Now if you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I have workers to yell at. It seems someone thought it was time for a break," she growled.

It was well into the night before she finally allowed the workers to quit. If she had her way they'd work through the night and the hottest part of the day, but they were only human, after all.

Meela collapsed face-down on her sleeping bag in her tent, near tears with frustration. He was so close! But where?

Once again insomnia took hold of her, and rather than toss and turn for hour after miserable hour she got up, laced her leather boots, and strolled through the site for the millionth time.

"Anck-su-Namun..." It sounded like the wind, but definitely wasn't. Was it? She was exhausted, and wishful thinking could play tricks on the mind...

She stopped in her tracks. "Imhotep?" she whispered. "Is that you? Where are you, my love?"

"Anck-su-Namun..."

"Imhotep? Please, help me to find you," she pleaded. She dropped to one knee and spread her palms on the cooling sand. Eyes closed, she inhaled deeply to clear her mind. Once again she brought her mental image of him clearly into focus, painting details right down to the curve of his ears, his nose, his lips, his chin--

"Anck-su-Namun..." The voice was louder this time, more insistent.

"Imhotep," she murmured in reply.

Again the ghostly voice whispered her old name inside her head, and she crawled a few feet in the sand toward its apparent source. She repeated the process each time she heard it, until she seemed to be right above where the sound was emanating.

"Anck-su-Namun..." This time the voice sounded relieved, confirming her location.

"I'm here, Imhotep," she said softly, touching her forehead to the sand. "Hang on, my beloved. I'm here, now."

The sand beneath her shifted, and at first she thought it was an earthquake or the start of a sandstorm. But no, it was localized, only moving directly under her body. As she sat in stunned silence, a thick column of sand spun slowly upward and--it seemed impossible--hugged her.

"Anck-su-Namun..." The voice was fading now, not with distance, but as if the speaker were losing strength, falling asleep. The sand slid back into its natural position, now ordinary and lifeless.

She smiled sadly. "Soon, my love," she whispered. "I promise I will free you, no matter what it takes. I love you." Disregarding the absurdity of it all, she lowered her face and planted a light kiss on the sand. "Soon, Imhotep."

At the first hint of dawn, Meela set the laborers to work digging in the spot where Imhotep had led her. By nightfall the next day they had uncovered both the black Book of the Dead and the golden Book of Amun-Ra, and it seemed like only a matter of time before their ultimate goal was met. Meela felt like a child at Christmas, yearning to tear open a giant box under the tree. So close, now. Soon. His proximity sent a tingling feeling like incipient lightning tickling down her spine.

She and Lock-Nah milled around inside a lean-to tent away from the heart of the diggings. The Curator had advised her to stop hovering, since her constant nagging--he had used a somewhat more diplomatic word--was making the workers nervous and annoyed. The dark rumors floating around about supernatural dealings and curses were already more than enough to instill nervousness, and annoyed workers were never a good thing.

She compromised by staying away for awhile to study the Books instead. Lock-Nah helped her unpack them from their storage crate. "The Book of the Dead," he said, setting the unnaturally heavy volume on a table cluttered with maps and paperwork, "gives life."

She picked up the golden companion and blew dust off the cover. "And the Book of the Living," she said, well aware of the irony, "takes life away." She set it beside the other and resisted the urge to read from either just yet. 

"I thought that was my job," Lock-Nah joked grimly, and she afforded him an amused smile.

The electric feeling in her spine grew stronger. "We're getting close..."

Moments later, what appeared to be a small earthquake shook the camp. Meela knew better than to judge by appearances. Soon screams of terror erupted from the main pit, accompanied by a loathsome clicking, chittering sound. Meela watched impassively from a distance as some of Lock-Nah's men broke out the flame throwers. Even if the shoots of fire failed to contain the man-eating insects, she was unconcerned for her own safety; the scarabs obeyed Imhotep, after all.

The gruesome discovery in addition to the tingling in her body lead her to one inescapable conclusion, and she grinned even more widely. "We're getting very close..."

So close in fact, that if she started walking over there now, she'd be just in time for--

"We've found him!"

That.

With the scarabs under control, everyone ran toward the location of the shout. A crane was lowering an oddly-shaped rock onto the sand. Meela momentarily stopped in her tracks, and Lock-Nah rushed on without her. The sight of it brought a giddy rushing to her head, but she wasn't about to faint now. She'd waited too long for this moment. She pushed past the excited workers and reached the scene just as the Curator announced, "Imhotep! It's him! It's Imhotep!"

"Now we must raise those who serve him," Lock-Nah said.

She strode up to the rock. It was oddly translucent, and although she couldn't see the figure inside clearly, her heart recognized him. Ancient instinct took over, and she made a sweeping gesture over the face of the rock with one hand, just as they had greeted each other countless times in the distant past. At last, my love, she silently exulted.

There was a commotion behind her, breaking the spell of the moment--not that there was much more she could do with a rock at the moment, anyway. She turned to see the approach of Hafez's three "gentlemen": scruffy, unwashed mercenaries.

"Give it to me," the Curator said, and it was clear they knew was "it" was.

The shortest of the three, Red, shrugged a little. "The, uh, opportunity passed us by."

The Curator scowled. "We need that Bracelet."

"And we need it before it opens," Lock-Nah snarled, his short temper snapping. He raised his gun at the three, who responded in kind, as did everyone in the vicinity with a firearm.

"Enough!" Meela said in disgust, and like chastised children they all lowered their guns. She leaned in to speak to the Curator. "My dear Hafez, I told you, I should have handled it."

"I did not want your...past history to cloud the issue," he said discreetly.

"Don't you worry none," Red interjected. "We know where it is, we'll take care of it."

"No," the Curator said immediately. "We'll take care of it. I have a different chore for you now."

Of course, Meela thought. The Chest. A relic of even more importance, as far as she was concerned. She and Hafez had discussed that wrinkle before.

"Where is the Bracelet?" she asked impatiently.

"It's on its way to merry old London."

The Curator inhaled as if preparing himself for the long journey then and there. "Then London is where we must go," he said with firm resolve. He led the way through the crowd of workers with Meela and Lock-Nah behind him. There was no time to lose.

"They have it?" Meela screeched. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The Curator withered under her scathing glare. The others in line with them at the airline ticket counter turned to look. "These particular, er, gentlemen, have served me well before."

"You sent a trio of incompetent grave robbers to steal some under the noses of Nefertiri and that boy-toy of hers? What were you thinking? You know what they did to our lord last time! Did you really think those three morons could outwit them?"

"I thought--"

"You thought. I find that hard to believe," she sniffed. "They aren't your average run-of-the-mill archaeologists, Hafez. He's a chosen Med-Jai warrior and she's the Bracelet's official protector! Those stooges didn't have a prayer against the two of them!"

"Now, Meela, please. Calm down. We'll get the Bracelet back. And haven't you always wanted to see London?"

"That's not the point and you know it." She crossed her arms on her chest and turned away from him. "I'm very disappointed in you."

"I...I'm sorry."

She turned back to face him and leaned in to whisper, "I'll get the Bracelet back myself, and see Nefertiri's corpse at my love's feet as a bonus. And someday soon when I'm the queen of the world, I'll make idiocy punishable by death. Oh, and you can forget about Oxford."

The Curator's face fell. He had been looking forward to meddling with that particular institution. "But Meela--"

"Don't make me take the Louvre away."

He gasped and tightly shut his mouth.

"Good."

"And to think a few years ago you were begging me for extra credit on your term paper," he said under his breath as they reached the ticket window. 

"Oh, hush," she said before pulling out her wallet and turning her attention to the ticket seller. "I need information about group rates for round-trip flights to London, please. In fact, we may need to charter a plane. We have some rather heavy cargo..."


	8. When the Nile Meets the Thames

Meela's Story

Mummy Fanfic by Katie Sullivan, a.k.a. KatieScarlet (www.sullivanet.com/mummy)  
Rated PG-13 for innuendo, mild cussing and mature themes

Disclaimer: Meela/Anck-su-Namun, Imhotep, and all other characters besides Jeffrey are (c) Universal and are used without claim to copyright as a fan tribute. I maketh no money from this fic. Sueth me not.

Chapter Eight: When the Nile Meets the Thames

While the others got their precious cargo situated in a storage room beneath the British Museum, Meela allowed herself a quick shopping spree in London's finest stores. There were several hours to kill before the cover of darkness they needed for the next step of the plan. Besides, she wanted to look her best when her beloved awoke. The modern styles would no doubt be slightly disorienting to him, but, still, beauty was beauty.

The coup de grâce was the new dress she had special-ordered from a London tailor. It was roughly modern, but the cut and pattern of lines on the fabric nicely mirrored a design of paint she had often worn in ancient times. It was far warmer and more modest than mere body paint, but she hoped it was also familiar enough to put Imhotep at ease.

The Curator and Lock-Nah were ready to go when she returned from shopping, and darkness was swiftly falling, hastened by an approaching thunderstorm. Spies had already pinpointed the location of the O'Connells' mansion, so it was just a matter of going there and convincing them that surrendering the Bracelet would be a wise idea. Meela absently stroked the lid of the snake basket in her lap as the car sped through the night. A very wise idea indeed...

Breaking into the mansion was no problem. At first it seemed no one was home, but the cars in the driveway told a different story. They split up to search for either the Bracelet or someone to coerce into giving it up. Meela was rummaging through a desk drawer when a red-robed man informed her that the Curator had found the man of the house. Assuming it to be Nefertiri's lover, she picked up the snake basket and hurried to investigate.

When she arrived, the Curator and a number of Lock-Nah's men had the unfortunate man held in a chair with a sharp blade tickling his throat. She tried not to laugh, recognizing him as Johnathan, Evelyn/Nefertiri's loose-lipped brother. Since no one else knew any better, she decided to play along and have a little fun with him. "Hello," she cooed in her most seductive voice, strutting into the room with the snake basket held innocuously in her hands.

"Hello," he said nervously. It wasn't easy to sound charming with a sword blade across one's throat, but Johnathan did his absolute best.

"Where's your wife?" she asked.

"My wife? Oh, you mean Evy? Uh...I think she went off to Baden-Baden or Tibet or something. The girl's a free spirit." He somehow crossed his legs casually without making the sword cut into his neck, no small trick. Judging by the awkward attempt at flirting, he didn't recall their last meeting. Judging by the amount of alcohol he had imbibed that day, she wasn't the least surprised. "Did I mention I was single now?" he said with a cheesy grin.

Meela smiled slyly, since her own bachelorette status was soon to end. Speaking of which, time to get down to business. She opened the basket and fearlessly reached in for its inhabitant. As Anck-su-Namun she had had an uncanny way with snakes, and this had apparently carried on into this lifetime, as well. "Egyptian asps are quite poisonous," she said casually, planting a tiny kiss on the side of the animal's scaly head. She never understood why everyone go the heebie-jeebies from snakes. They were quite cute, she thought. Judging by the terrified expression on Johnathan's face as she approached him with this particular specimen, he didn't share her opinion.

"It's downstairs, there's a safe. The combination is uh, uh, three, twenty, fifty-eight, three nine three, something..."

She kept advancing with the increasingly annoyed snake.

"It's in the safe downstairs!" Johnathan insisted, his eyes for once riveted on something besides the most beautiful woman in the room. "I told you! I told you!"

"And your point is?"

"My point is I told you so you wouldn't kill me!" Johnathan said in a strangled voice.

"When did we make that arrangement?" she said with amusement, lowering the hissing snake ever closer to his pulsing neck.

The real Rick O'Connell chose that moment to enter the room. He stopped in his tracks upon seeing his brother-in-law surrounded by mean-looking men in red robes with swords, the Curator and Meela with her snake. "Uh, hello... Johnathan, I thought I said no more wild parties."

"Oh, well, when you're popular..."

"Of course, knowing my brother-in-law, he probably deserves whatever you're about to do to him, but this is my house and I have certain rules about snakes and dismemberment."

Meela changed the plan and chucked the snake at Rick instead, but his ancestral Med-Jai reflexes kicked in and allowed him to catch it harmlessly in mid-air. He then tossed it back at one of the red robed minions--not so harmlessly.

"Shoot him!" Meela ordered.

All proverbial hell broke loose then, with machine gun fire and swords and such flashing everywhere. Judging by the racket downstairs, Lock-Nah and the others had found something to occupy themselves, too. Meela did her best to stay out of the way of the machine gun fire and rounded up her poor snake, which had released its venom into a hapless bystander and was temporarily harmless.

Rick and Johnathan managed to escape through the bathroom window. Downstairs, however, Lock-Nah and his men had better luck. They managed to kidnap Evelyn/Nefertiri and the Bracelet's chest. Having gotten what they came for, they all piled into their cars and sped off into the rainy night.

Meela hugged the basket with her snake in it close to her chest and tried not to tremble with excitement. That was the last pesky detail to be taken care of. Now, at last, there was nothing standing between her and her goal of awakening Imhotep. She silently urged the driver to go faster. The sooner they were back to the British Museum, the sooner they could raise him. The Curator had tried to convince her to wait until they were back in Egypt, but she insisted upon doing it now for two reasons. First, with the O'Connells, and, according to Lock-Nah, the Med-Jai on their tail they would probably need his powers for protection. Second, she would simply explode if she had to wait any longer.

Even disregarding the speeding laws it seemed to take forever to reach the British Museum, but at last they were there. They parked in back, and the engine was still running when Meela threw the door open and dashed inside with the others on her heels. Lock-Nah's men had prepared the storage room for the ceremony. A ring of torches surrounded the makeshift altar where the chunk of rock waited.

A part of Meela wanted to read the incantation from the Book of the Dead herself, but when it came right down to it she was too nervous. Like a schoolgirl waiting for her date to pick her up for the prom, she was suddenly shy and skittish. Her hands were shaking and her knees felt like wet noodles. The Curator gently took the heavy book from her and shooed her into an adjacent room to compose herself. "You can come out when it is over. You will know when."

She nodded and sat down on a packing crate. From the next room, she listened as Lock-Nah's men issued a droning chant. The Curator's voice rang out, reading the unmistakable words from the Book of the Dead.

"Akum Ra.... Akum Dei..."

Meela closed her eyes and tried to breathe slowly. The ancient words had a strangely calming effect on her. As the Curator chanted for Imhotep to rise up, Meela did, too. She stood, once again confident and sure.

An unearthly moaning roar came from the next room, and she smiled. It was time. She ran a hand through her hair, shook out her tense wrists and began walking toward the sound.

There he was, talking to the Curator. Imhotep.

She walked forward with renewed confidence, her eyes riveted on his.

She had expected to be frightened and revolted by his mummified appearance, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. He was her soul mate, and her soul recognized his with a surge of love that made physical form inconsequential. His aura was his own, the adoring gaze he fixed on her the same as ever. This was Imhotep. Her Imhotep.

The Curator interpreted her rapt stare as fear, and said, "Do not be frightened."

Her eyes never left her beloved. "I am not afraid," she said with demure amusement. Then, slipping into the ancient Egyptian tongue with ease, she said, "I am Anck-su-Namun reincarnated."

Imhotep's ragged face took on that familiar smirk. "Only in body," he said, taking a strand of her ebony hair in his fingers. "But soon... I shall bring back your soul from the underworld, and our love shall once again be whole." His voice was raspy, like the long-unused instrument it was, but it sent quivers down her spine. It had been so long since she had heard his voice outside a dream.

He had touched her. He had spoken to her. It was real. He was here at last, beside her. Everything couldn't help but be perfect from this point onward. Destiny wouldn't dare to interfere with their happiness again. Not this time. Not if she had anything to say about it.

Unfortunately, she did...

~~~~~~~~~~~

The rest of the story is included in my fanfic "Through a Mummy's Eyes," http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=300954 or http://www.sullivanet.com/mummy/fic5-tmr2a.htm


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